When Joe Wright attached Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui to choreograph the dances and actions of ANNA KARENINA, he got a creative partner who knew how to translate the story’s grand emotions into motion. Apollinaire Scherr profiles the artist.

While ANNA KARENINA marks Keira Knightley’s third literary adaptation with director Joe Wright, it also shows how far Knightley has come as an actress and artist through her numerous cinematic endeavors.

As Karenin, the heartbroken husband in ANNA KARENINA, Jude Law gives a heartbreaking performance in a role that can be easily misunderstood. But Law, who’s renowned for his charismatic good looks, has always sought out parts that defy his appearance and our expectations.

As Count Vronsky in ANNA KARENINA, Aaron Taylor-Johnson rises to the challenge to bring to life one of the great lotharios of literature. But such a dashing romantic figure is just another incarnation in this actor’s remarkable, diverse career.

In playing Oblonsky in ANNA KARENINA, Matthew Macfadyen re-teamed with actress Keira Knightley and director Joe Wright. Although the part’s a far cry from the romantic Darcy, who he played in PRIDE & PREJUDICE, Macfadyen’s made a career out of playing diverse characters.

To propel ANNA KARENINA’s storytelling, Joe Wright, composer Dario Marianelli, and choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui designed an intricate language of movement and music that allowed the actors, either in dance, gesture or stillness, to expressed their desires and dreams. Indeed the actors and director had the unique opportunity to have the film’s score present during production.

In film after film, Joe Wright makes work that pushes our concept of film, genre, and adaptation. In bringing Leo Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA to the screen, he moves his bold directorial style to a whole new level.

Though the film’s dress, Joe Wright and costume designer Jacqueline Durran followed a historical thread of luxury that connected the fashions of our time to 1950 European haute couture to 1870 imperial Russia. Be it Keira Knightley’s swoops of black taffeta or the simplicity of the peasant’s tunics, the designers created looks that showed off the timeless emotional truth of their characters.

Alicia Vikander’s first English-language role has already been getting critical acclaim for the grace and sensitivity she brings to the role of Kitty in ANNA KARENINA. But this film marks a lifetime of experience for her – first as a dancer, then as an actress.

In the role of Levin, Domhnall Gleeson had to standout in an all-star cast as the spiritual center of Joe Wright’s adaptation of ANNA KARENINA. But the young Irish actor is not only a budding star on his own, but also the son of one of Ireland’s great thespians, Brendan Gleeson.

While much of ANNA KARENINA is contained by the architecture of an old theater, there are select and significant scenes played in exterior locations, geographical locales that prove as meaningful as anything constructed on stage. As the filmmakers traveled from the frozen Russian farmland to local English estates to find natural scenes that fit.

In shooting ANNA KARENINA, Joe Wright and his cinematography Seamus McGarvey choreographed a complex ballet of camera moves, changing filters, and lighting sets to capture the mesmerizing movement on stage. In so doing, they created a unique cinematic vocabulary that spoke to the film’s bold style of adaptation.

To highlight the peculiar artifice of 19th century Russian society, Joe Wright refracted that historical moment through the prism of a stage. And to capture all its nuances, ANNA KARENINA’s filmmaking team built and rebuilt their theater to adroitly reflect the story's many inflections of class, elegance, tradition, action and romance.

To visually realize a story as epic as Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA, Wright needed his trusted team of film artists – including production designer Sarah Greenwood, DP Seamus McGarvey, costume designer Jacqueline Durran, among others – to make every element exact and exhilarating.

For director Joe Wright and his screenwriter Tom Stoppard, working on a new adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s epic about love, ANNA KARENINA, was itself a labor of love. But wasn’t till Wright hit upon a bold new way of staging the love story, the filmmakers saw how to bring something fresh to this classic romance.

Since Anna Karenina was first published in 1873, Tolstoy’s epic story of love has been reimagined and reinterpreted by filmmakers, dramatists, choreographers, composers, graphic artists and the like. Let’s look at a few.